My Last Friend
by Genis Aurion
Summary: [Goodbye fic, oneshot, nonslash]. StanKyle friendship. I never understood why you so badly wanted me to be your best friend. I suppose before the end, though, I'll find out for myself.


I suppose you've opened this because you saw "goodbye fic." The story starts at the line break below, but I wanna take this time to say my goodbye.

I _am_, in fact, leaving the South Park fandom. Forever most likely, but chance may pass when I feel like returning.

I don't find South Park very entertaining anymore. The humor no longer appeases me; somehow it's changed, and I miss the humor the older episodes had. In addition, it's just not really the fandom for me. I'm not saying I write any emotionally-heartfelt stories, but even if I could it wouldn't fit. Somehow, I can't see a bunch of large-headed bubble figures interacting the way I've previously written them as doing.

Most of you are quite tired of my updates anyway, as I've learned. But everyone's obligated to their own likes and dislikes and really isn't much of a concern to me. I really do thank everyone who has read my stuff, though…

Incidentally, if there's anyone out there who's interested in finishing up my unfinished stories you can contact me for my story plans and such. I'm not sure if any of you would actually want to do that, but if you're really that interested….

As for contacting me, I'll still always be an ear away. Contact info's still on my profile should you want to keep in touch with me after my departure. Also, so long as my author and story alerts don't fail me, I'll still be reading stories and works of those I'm faithful to. I'll review when need be, so don't worry about that either.

Well, cheers to a happy departure….  
-Zakuyoe.

* * *

The ending might suck a bit due to my unwillingness to finish, but nonetheless I present you:

**My Last Friend  
**_a friendship one-shot dedicated to all the friends I've made here_

We were always friends—just never best friends.

I remember that day in kindergarten when the four of us spent our first school day together. It was a fun time, or at least that was what my memories told me. We drew things against our teacher's will, we spoke back whenever we felt fit, and we had collected a select amount of toys we'd reserved for us and us alone. I remember how happy you had been, a complete turnaround from how you had been mere days before when you barely wanted to stay a minute here without your parents.

Yet still you approached me. Even after Cartman and Kenny left for their own separate ways you came up to me, quite bravely in fact, to ask me a simple question.

"Will you be my best friend?" I never understood it then; I don't understand it now. I had taken several steps backward at that instance, not even sure what you were possibly referring to then. A simple question clearly complicated my young mind, and I had meant every letter of the single word of my reply:

"Why?"—and sure it was only three letters, but in your ears the one-syllable word seemed to crush your spirits.

"My dad says _everyone_ has best friends!" you replied quite quickly; "and really, I think I like you a lot!" I don't even remember how I had taken that odd piece of news. Yet you were only a kindergartener with raven-tinted hair and blue eyes—a kindergartener I barely knew yet.

"No."

"Aw, but—!" but I had left you alone in front of the school as I walked hand in hand with my mother that had just arrived to pick me up. Back then I never really understood how much that might've hurt you, but then I really didn't seem to notice, either. You didn't let the situation arise; by the next day you were your chipper self once more, pleading me to walk over to Craig's group and take the fire truck you so badly wanted.

It might've been the end of it, I thought, but how foolish had I been. At our kindergarten graduation ceremony you attempted to ordain me once more as your best friend. By then, however, we had gotten to know each other a little more, and I had been a bit more willing to understand where you were coming from.

Yet still, "No."

"But Kyle, I'm your friend!" And yet somehow I couldn't help but smiling as you pouted, much as any other kindergartener would when they badly wanted something.

"Fine," I muttered, getting into my position in our alphabetically-organized line of students. "Let's play a game then."

"A game?"

"Stanley Marsh, you're an M!" exclaimed our teacher, rushing forward to remove him to his proper position.

Yet he resisted her. "What game?" I glanced up at my teacher, who seemed just about ready to murder me for keeping Stan out of line. Still, I turned back to my newly found friend, smiling with a childish grin as I made my reply.

"If you can figure out what I hate the most, I'll let you be my best friend."

You smiled back at me as our teacher dragged you away.

- - - - -

You and I both know how seriously you took that game. We had barely set foot into the first grade classroom, and already you began listing things at the top of your head.

"Clowns?"

"No."

"Dark rooms?"

"No."

"Water?"

"Water?" I repeated, and you nodded.

"It's like when people hate water and stuff. I think I heard my mom talking about it…." Even then I was quite the intelligent kid, and though I didn't want to discourage you from guessing quite absurd things to hate I had to correct you.

"That's when people _fear_ water. They probably only hate it because they fear it."

"Kyle, you're too smart," you told me, and something inside me at that moment had decided to bite my insides. Was I disturbed by your comment?—really, I don't remember. Maybe I didn't want to feel secluded by our group of friends because of my intelligence…. "You should be learning how to add and subtract numbers with double digits like the rest of us!"

"I already know it," I replied smugly, fingering the hem of my shirt. "I'm trying to memorize my times tables to twenty."

"Why?"

I couldn't give him an answer.

"You know… Kyle… you wouldn't happen to hate… dumb people…?"

I almost laughed at his guess. "No." If I did, I'm not sure what'd I have to do with Cartman….

But your guesses didn't end there. It was almost as if you had memorized a portion of the dictionary the night before, merely regurgitating words you had seen onto me while hoping for a correct answers. Some words you couldn't even pronounce correctly, and most them weren't really words you could hate to begin with. Logically, there was no way I could hate "albeit."

By second grade your guesses became more educated. You guessed all sorts of animals, from crocodiles to snakes, and you also guessed many pests like spiders and bees. You came bounding toward me every day to tell me your guesses with hopes high and smile wide, but every day I turned you down.

"Nope." It wasn't that we weren't friends at all while you kept guessing incorrectly. We still hung out a lot with Kenny and Cartman, and occasionally we'd plan an outing without the two of them—although, with us only being second graders almost all our outings were really just evenings at each other's houses. The only issue really had been your want for me to be your best friend, a want that surprisingly hadn't died down since the first time you had asked me.

"You don't hate… me… do you?"

And again I laughed. "No dude, of course not. But I _have_ been wondering…. Even if you guess right, why would you want a best friend that's only forced to be so because of a deal?"

You shrugged, not even caring of the situation I had just posed. And that day you had left me quite confused—not confused enough to last a few days, but certainly a night's worth of wondering what kind of character you really were. Even now as I think about it, you were a pretty mature kid for your age. Behind the juvenile requests for me to be your best friend was a second-grader that considered things much more than you should've for your age.

Somehow, I knew there was a reason behind your admittance to my game.

Around wintertime your guesses were growing dangerously close to the truth. The four of us were on our way to the local shops, holding proudly in hand the allowance we had saved just to buy each other friendship gifts—or at least, that's what you had told me.

When you left, Cartman had a completely different name for them. "Christmas gifts."

"Stan said they were friendship gifts!" I exclaimed, my face turning red. I could feel my insides wringing in pain as I tried holding back my anger. Just because I was Jewish, I'm sure, but he did have a very true point. I didn't celebrate Christmas….

"Nope, Christmas gifts. Sorry Kahl, no gifts for you!" My grip on my twenty-dollar wad tightened as I glared at him in the eye.

"Hey!" you yelled, having returned from wherever you had gone. "Stop being a jerk to Kyle! He can get gifts if he wants to receive them!"

"No Stan," I muttered, and I relaxed in accepted defeat. "I can't. I don't celebrate Christmas."

"You don't?" For someone who wanted me to be his best friend, I still found it odd that you hadn't figured that out yet. "Kyle… I just may have it…."

"What'd you mean?" Cartman asked, being immediately followed by a muffled sound from Kenny. "Kahl can't get around it. He can't receive damn presents."

"They're friendship gifts, after all," you said slowly, shaking your head. Then you turned to me and smiled. "Unless you don't celebrate friendship?"

"Course I do," I replied, smiling as brilliantly as my face would allow me to. Clearly there really was someone else behind your childish demeanor, but at that time I still hadn't quite placed it. No second grader really thinks about that, especially a Jewish one that wasn't left alone on Christmas day, for once.

"By the way," you had asked me before we parted ways with gifts in hand. "Is the answer Christmas?"

"Nope."

"Cartman?" At that time he wasn't, but as time progressed Eric Cartman would slowly claim that title. Yet for the sake of that time period I had rejected your guess once more, placing an arm around your shoulders as we walked down the streets of South Park.

"You know," I said slowly, biting my lip as my mind finalized the decision I was going to make. "I'm dropping the game."

"Huh?"

"I really think you're a good person, Stan. I'm being pretty childish if my friendship with you is determined by a stupid game." Quite frankly guessing my most hated thing wasn't too hard of a feat, but for almost three years you still hadn't guessed correctly. And the game was getting old; maybe it was time to accept what would eventually be inevitable….

"So you're really gonna be my best friend?" you asked, your eyes suddenly gleaming in excitement—though that might've just been the moonlight. "Sweet, dude!"

I really do wonder how you can be both so childish and so deep at the same time.

- - - - -

As your best friend, I feel absolutely ashamed it's taken me until now to figure out your secret.

My family's somewhere in the distance, walking back to the car that I had driven to your funeral. Thirty-five years is too short of a life to live, yet somehow you did it anyway. The minute I had found out I felt a sharp pain inside me, instantly leaving my wife to hastily do something about your situation. Now I'm at your funeral, days later, crying for you while clenching a wad of paper in my hand—even if you're already six feet in the ground.

Your own family's crying, and yet it feels like I've cried more than they have. But then, I am family to you. As second grade progressed to third, fourth, fifth, into high school, college, and every grade in between, we remained very close. The day you got engaged, the day I married, we were always by each other. Even raising our own families didn't prevent us from being together at times to enjoy each other's friendship.

Yet to think that it's only now that I've figured you out, it makes me feel like I've not known you at all for all these years. It doesn't add, perhaps, that you've been hiding your sickness from me, no matter how small it had seemed to you. All those times we had spent in the sports bar betting over our favorite teams and not once did you mention you were ill….

Had I been your best friend at all? Did I fail somewhere along the way? Did I do something wrong to make you not want to tell me anything anymore? No, that couldn't be. We were friends…. Even when it didn't seem like it, like when you left me the following Christmas in the midst of excitement, or when you were so excited to go on your second date with your girlfriend that you'd forgotten the plans we had the afternoon of.

I know we were friends when you died. There was no way I'd doubt your friendship—after all, it's something we both celebrate.

And then, I let go. It feels relieving that I had decided to be your best friend, that you had me while you still could. And in a way I feel glad that I chose to give up the game for your sake, for the sake of being your friend based on our experiences together.

Yet it's only because of that game that I'm able to smile at your funeral. Even though you aren't there to pick up the wad of paper I've dropped on the ground, much as you had done when I dropped my money on the snow that Christmas season years and years ago, what that paper contains has given enough reason for me to finally understand you.

You knew all along. You knew all along what I hated the most.

You knew this whole time, since the first grade, or maybe even before. You knew what I hated the most, yet you played on with my game. All along you merely wanted an excuse for us to bond better, all for the sake of being better best friends when the time came I'd accept your offer. That had been your whole plan… in that note you told me so.

And really, who's the smart one now?—you definitely were. From the day you told me I was too smart to the day you discovered I'd be the only one not getting Christmas gifts, he had known all along that what I hated most had been being alone. I'm not alone now, though. Even though you're gone I feel anything but alone—from that day on you made sure I hadn't been alone.

With your death I felt a throbbing pain in my heart—that fear of being alone, the same pain that occurred when you said I was too smart, the same pain that winter day. But it faded away in due time. Somehow, I felt that the friendship we celebrated would last beyond your leaving.

I would never be alone.

I suppose you're my first friend I'll lose. But I know for sure that you'll be my last friend I'll forget.

**- _Fin_ –  
**_(and farewell)_**  
**Zak

On a side note, I've found myself madly in love with the anime "Ouran High (School) Host Club" over the past few days. I might write there one day; if you like that anime, you might find me at that part of this fanfiction site.


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